Hayes Music blog

In 1933, Florence Price was the first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra (the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Florence’s music brings together the European classical tradition in which she was trained and the haunting melodies of African-American spirituals and folk tunes. Today’s listening piece is the third dance movement from her Symphony in E minor. The Juba dance or hambone was a dance based in West Africa that was imported by African slaves to American plantations and could be performed at gatherings where instruments like drums (for fear of transmitted secret messages) were forbidden.

The Turangalîla-Symphonie is a large-scale piece of orchestral music by Olivier Messiaen (1908–92). It was written from 1946 to 1948 and is considered a 20th-century masterpiece.

Turanga (time) and lîla (love) come together in this epic symphony by a modern master — complete with the mysterious sounds of the ondes Martenot.

The ondes Martenot or ondes musicales (“musical waves”) is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating “wavering” sounds. A player of the ondes martenot is called an ondist.

The ondes Martenot was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello.

A typical performance of the Turangalîla-Symphonie runs around 80 minutes in length. When asked about the meaning of the work’s duration in its ten movements and the reason for the use of the ondes Martenot, Messiaen simply replied, “It’s a love song.”

The unusual sounds of the ondes Martenot mean that it has featured in many films, particularly science fiction and horror films. It has also featured in popular music. Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead is credited with bringing the ondes Martenot to a larger audience. He became fascinated with the instrument after hearing a performance of the Turangalîla-Symphonie when he was 15.

Spirituals are a genre of songs originating in the USA and created by African Americans. Spirituals were originally an oral tradition that shared Christian values while also describing the hardships of slavery. Although spirituals were originally unaccompanied monophonic (unison) songs, they developed into harmonised choral arrangements over time.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers are an African-American a cappella ensemble, consisting of students at Fisk University. Vocal performances without instrumental accompaniment are called a cappella. The first group was organised in 1871 to tour and raise funds for the college. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is an another famous spiritual. The earliest known recording of this spiritual was in 1909.

Frederick Delius (1862 – 1934) was an English composer. He was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire to a wealthy business family but he resisted attempts to recruit him into the family wool business. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties, instead dreaming of becoming a professional composer and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. He incorporated the African-American spirituals that he had heard being sung, as well as other non-European musical sounds into his opera Koanga which was first performed in 1904. The story centres on Creole life and features an African prince and voodoo priest who have been enslaved on a Mississippi plantation. Koanga is considered to be the first opera in the European tradition to base much of its melodic material on African-American music. Today’s melody, La Calinda, is the most famous musical passage from the opera.

Yesterday we heard Ravi Shankar’s music combining Indian and Western classical instrumentation. Today we will hear how Ravi inspired many other musicians, including George Harrison from The Beatles.

“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” is a song by The Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. The track features a sitar part, played by lead guitarist George Harrison. This was the first appearance of the Indian string instrument on a Western rock recording. The song also helped elevate Ravi Shankar and Indian classical music to mainstream popularity in the West, and the song is recognised as a key work in the early evolution of world music.

Many other rock and pop artists, including the Rolling Stones went on to integrate elements of Indian classical music into their musical approach. This became know as raga rock.

Here is another example of raga rock from the 1960s:

Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar wrote this piece in 1980. The work is subtitled Raga Mala (“A Garland of Ragas”), presenting 29 ragas in four big movements. A raga forms the melody in Indian classical music. Ragas are patterns of notes but are different to a scale or melody in Western music. They are really a combination of both. Each rag:

• has a particular ascending and descending pattern
• is associated with a different time of the day, season, mood or special occasion

Each raga will have some notes that are more important than others. Ragas also contain short musical phrases. The raga is traditionally played on a sitar.

The sitar

• Is a long-necked plucked string instrument with movable frets and a gourd resonator.
• Is played by plucking the strings with a metal plectrum.
• Has six or seven main strings and twelve or more sympathetic strings running underneath them, which resonate in sympathy.
• Has a characteristic shimmering sound.

Listen out for the sitar player improvising using the notes of the raga in many different ways:

• playing pitch bends (done by physically bending the string as it is played)
• playing fast scales or runs
• playing glissandos (slides)
• ornamentation (fast notes that are added to a melody to embellish them)

This piece was written with the following instrumentation:

 3 flutes , 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, percussion (anvil, bass drum, bongos, chimes, clave, conga, cymbals, finger cymbals, glockenspiel, marimba, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tambourine, tam-tams, thunder sheet, triangle, vibraphone, whip, wind machine, xylophone), harp, celesta, strings, and solo sitar

Claude Debussy was a French composer (1862-1918). He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Suite bergamasque  is one of Debussy’s most famous piano suites. It was first composed by Debussy around 1890, at the age of 28, but was significantly revised just before its publication in 1905. The third and most famous movement of Suite bergamasque is “Clair de lune”, written in the key of D♭ major. Its time signature is ⁹₈ and the music is marked andante très expressif meaning at a walking speed; very expressive. Listen out for the homophonic texture. This literally means ”sounding together”. The texture of a piece can be described as homophonic when several parts move together (e.g. in the same rhythm). A good example of this can be heard around 1 min 36.

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) was an American jazz singer. She was sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She is considered by many to be one of the greatest scat singers in jazz history. Scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless or nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice as an instrument. Notice the fast tempo, typical of jazz styles such as such as swing and bebop.

Scat emerged in jazz in the early 1900s when singers in New Orleans began to imitate the first jazz instrumentalists. Legend has it that Louis Armstrong, the great trumpeter, vocalist and pioneer of improvisation in jazz, became the first to record scat in the 1926 track “Heebie Jeebies”, when he forgot the words during a recording session. Louis Armstrong has already featured on the music blog back in April: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/hayesmusic.blog/977

Learn more about Ella Fitzgerald here:

El Tanbura is an Egyptian band, formed in the 1980s. El Tanbura are one of Egypt’s leading folk bands, and they show pride in their country’s history of resistance through their protest songs. El Tanbura is a collective of veteran Egyptian master musicians, singers, fishermen and philosophers based in Port Said. For almost two decades they have been the custodians of some of Egypt’s oldest folk melodies. Their performances are based on traditional Egyptian music, featuring the simsimiyya instrument.

The simsimiyya is a traditional plucked lyre used in Egypt, Jordan and Yemen. In Egypt it is traditionally used to accompany a dance called bambutiyya.

At the heart of the group’s music is the spirit of celebration, of magic, of dance, and reverie – and the simsimiyya.

Amy Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was an English singer and songwriter. She was known for her deep, expressive contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres, including soul, rhythm and blues and jazz. Contralto is a lower female voice. You may remember learning about the different voice types in the first home-learning task you completed for music.

Amy composed the lyrics and melody for this song and combined these with chord progressions and melodies from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1967 hit song Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Recreating musical ideas from an existing song in this way is called interpolation. Listen to the 1967 song here and see if you can hear the musical similarities.